I find it impressive how negative people tend to be because something is not pure enough, they talk it down even much more than the duopoly systems. Yes, Sailfish OS has some closed source UI parts, and you can’t just install desktop programs outside of the cli without running into problems. But running desktop programs, not optimised for mobile use are a terrible experience to begin with. This is a mobile device, not a desktop. If you disagree with that and want a desktop on your phone, there are options for you too, Sailfish OS isn’t it though.
That said, what surprised me most is how much I am in the terminal on the phone and enjoying it. You’d certainly not going to have that kind of experience on an Android, also not on a degoogled one.
It being proprietary is a nonstarter for me
What’s a good non-proprietary option?
I’m personally more interested in following the development of postmarketOS, the only non-proprietary project that does not rely on Google/Android, though it’s not yet production ready for the average user in most cases.
Also, no mainline kernel support. Pretty sure it’d be easy to do for Jolla (even I manage to do some mainlining work and I don’t sell phones).
This means it’ll be a security nightmare at some point, just like any other phone.
Plus the specific app format. You cannot install the many nice GNOME apps, KDE apps and others that already exist.
I do have a SailfishOS phone for testing, but to make it even a bit useful I’d have to use AppSupport, which is Android in a container with a proprietary wrapper. There are barely any apps, they should leverage the power of the many mobile Linux apps that exist. I’d rather have some apps with a UI that looks different to the rest than not having what I need.
Sailfish OS can run on mainline kernel. The Jolla Phone does not run a mainline kernel because it consists of off the shelf phone components and those are for Android phones outside of the world of iOS.
Mainlining is anything but easy if you aim is a functioning daily driver and not a tinker project, especially in a team as small as Jolla’s with so many more urgent tasks.
PS: Angelfish runs just fine on my Jolla Phone.
“more urgent tasks”
Jolla could just mainline and open source and they’d get more developer power, the devs just prefer devices that are more open
Also, I’m mainlining stuff myself, without being a phone company. Surely they’d have a much easier time.
The kernel depends on the hardware. Trying to get hardware with mainline kernel support is hard and expensive. Mainlining isn’t the trivial task you make it out to be, otherwise postmarket would not struggle that much. Or tell me which device just works with postmarket OS?
Sailfish OS can work with mainline Linux kernels, it has been ported to the Pine Phone for example.
It is not trivial, it can be. The company designing the phone can choose components with mainline kernel support over others.
If you choose an SoC with decent support and, for example, a vibration module or modem with decent mainline support, you just have to write a device tree.
If you build a phone, you know what regulators exist, what voltages they have and where they connect.
It’s not the type of reverse engineering I have to do myself, the phone company knows their own device.
And even if they task another company to do it, they can just write in their contract “provide us with the following” and they get what they need.
It’s a lot easier for a phone company than for people doing it in their spare time by reverse engineering things.
Yes, you can choose components and then you get something like the Pinephone. Do I really need to go on why there are substantial downsides connected to that?dann können Of course, if you sell 10 mio phones things get easier but that is ou of reach for any such project by a long shot.
Or which mainline Linux phone with acceptable hardware am I unaware of?
Oh, there are many acceptable phones, as people use Linux phones and this community also exists. There are many Linux phone users out there that accept a phone and choose to use it.
No need to use a Pinephone, we have more modern SoC that are well supported, such as SM6350, SDM845, SDM670, SC7280…
EDIT: Also, what I forgot to mention is that you really don’t need to sell 10 million phones to build usable and decent hardware. See for example Fairphone, they have sold less than a million.
This is what really makes it a non-starter for me. Also, if there was a mainline kernel, I could just install any other distro I want instead.
I’m still waiting for a somewhat modern phone with a fully functional mainline kernel.
The app format lock in sounds crazy to me. How does it stop you from running other apps? Does it not have a terminal? Does it not give you sudo? Does it refuse to run any executables, or is it about the ui toolkit?
Sorry for the barrage, that sounded outrageous
There is no lock in, there are merely incompatibilities. You can install sudo, but by default there is devel-su which is pretty much the same thing. You can install rpms and if you don’t like pkcon you can install zypper as package manager. As long as you stay within the terminal emulator things tend to work.
There is a misunderstanding that desktop programs would be such a great boon for a mobile phone. But mobile phones suck with desktop UI. You need a mobile UI for it to make sense and that is exactly where incompatibilities are coming from.
I installed a community port of the qt6 based KDE plasma browser Angelfish for example and it is running just fine on Sailfish OS.
They just have their own format using their owm SailfishOS-specific UI libraries. Their apps don’t work elsewhere without patching, there’s no Flatpak and they only have SailfishOS apps in the repo.
Sure, you can write your own apps, but I prefer using what’s already there.
It’s just the user interface.
Use Nemo if you prefer that.
Finally got to viewing this. Great review. Always loved sailfish ever since I had my N9 (with its predecessor Meego.)
Best UI hands down. I would love to get this if it worked stateside.
For everyone interested here is the official product page: https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-october-2026
the 8GB/128GB version costs 649€
Pretty expensive for a Linux phone that does not allow running most Linux apps.
A Fairphone costs 549 € (100 euros less), for that you get 256 GB of storage, better specs, repairability and a wider range of mobile Linux distros to choose from.
Then get a Fairphone, that said, most of the people who have purchased the Jolla Phone have gotten 256 GB for 500-580 EUR. I personally got it for 580 EUR.
Which one of those Linux distros on Fairphone is as daily driveable as a phone as Sailfish OS?
You know just as well as me that a phone is daily drivable if it does what you need, which is highly subjective.
I personally have used phones that wouldn’t work at all for most.
There are several options and people should look things up themselves and make sure the things that are important to them are supported.
I cannot give you an easy, simple, short answer in a single post, but we could discuss this in audio for many hours, easily. Sometimes simple answers do not work.
Thema advertising it as a Linux Phone is misleading imho. They should focus on advertising it as an alternative to Android/iOS with optional Android App support.
But from a Hardware point of view you are right. It is not a flagship device. In regards to repairability at least the battery can be replaced.
Replaceable Battery is just the legal minimum for the EU.
I prefer repairability, we’ve got too much trash already and the planet isn’t in a good state.
What is so bad about the repairability of the Jolla Phone? You can have a look at the teardown on ifixit. Seems pretty straight forward and modular. Sure, Fairphone is yet better, not so much because it is so much easier to take apart but because of how extensive their replacement part store is.
Not necessarily for Smartphones and Tablets. There is an exception:
manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives may provide the battery or batteries referred to in point (i)(a) only to professional repairers if manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives ensure that the following requirements are met:
(a) after 500 full charge cycles the battery has, in a fully charged state, a remaining capacity of at least 83 % of the rated capacity;
(b) the battery endurance in cycles achieves a minimum of 1 000 full charge cycles and after 1 000 full charge cycles the battery has, in a fully charged state, a remaining capacity of at least 80 % of the rated capacity;
See: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32023R1670
So If this requirements are met it does not need to be easily replacable by the End-User. Don’t know If they can achieve that.
How does it compare with the Murena gs6?
Murena is android, this one is “full” linux.
Are there any reviews available for the Murena?
Not really, I am trying to find any sort of feedback about this phone. Might buy it and post a layman’s review…
The road to perfection is step by step. And sometimes you have two terrible choices, and you have to choose the one which is less bad.
